Islam Matters
Regardless of the topic under dispute,
the argument usually goes like this:
Men have a minimal understanding
of what it is like to be a woman so why
should they be deemed authority to
establish rulings on issues pertaining
exclusively to her? How are they to
decide when a woman can pray or
not? How can they declare when a
woman cannot enter the Masjid or
where she should sit inside it? How
can they decide what parts of a body a
woman should cover?
We can see the problem with this
simplistic and dismissive approach
to Islamic law by asking a simple
question: If this logic is valid, then
why stop here? The same arguments,
after all, can be raised with regards to
any issue. Who are men to decide all
the other things that make a person
ritually impure? Who are they to
decide what we read in prayer and
how we pray? Indeed, who are they to
say that the Qur’an is the unchanged
word of Allah? This might seem
like exaggerating the issue, but both
attacks are aimed at the same people.
Everything we know about Islam,
not just women issues, but issues
universal to men and women--- and
yes, in a way, even the text of the
Qur’an itself -- have come to us
through the same chains, the same
sources, the same jurists and scholars.
If the scholars proved to be biased
and unreliable in some issues, who is
to say the rest of the issues are safe?
The vast majority of Islamic rulings
are not declared explicitly in the
Qur’an. The Qur’an wasn’t revealed as
line-by-line rule book on the do’s and
don’ts of everyday life. The thousands
of rulings that we need to guide our
day to day life were derived from the
Qur’an and Sunnah by the scholars.
This does not mean that they are not
divine rulings. Fiqh is not separate
from the Qur’an or Hadith, it comes
directly from the two.
This confusion about women issues
stems from an ignorance regarding
fiqh and how it evolved. It reveals a
lack of understanding of the role of
the Prophet a in the scheme of the
Shari‘a and consequent belittling of
hadith. It reflects an underestimation
of the evolution and preservation of
traditional Islamic knowledge and
the integrity of the scholars. In other
words the bold tendency to question
Islamic injunctions betrays a serious
illiteracy about the development of
those injunctions.
This is not to say that scholars are
free from error; they were indeed
only human. But the Islamic scholarly
tradition is rich. It did not allow for
just anyone to come up with anything
out of whim and establish that as
God-given law and undeniable truth.
The confusion
about women
issues stems
from an
ignorance
regarding fiqh
and how it
evolved.
Everything declared to be part of
religious law had to have evidence
supporting it. For even minor issues,
like whether to put the knees down
first when going for sajdah in prayer
or the hands, scholars would bring up
numerous proofs from the Qur’an
and Hadith. Only then were their
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